


wood and clay

by portions_forfox



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose wants to go home and she wants to stay with Martha, or: you cannot have your cake and eat it too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wood and clay

**Author's Note:**

> written for kerrykhat's prompt at dollsome's femslash ficathon: _martha/rose, this wanderlust will carry us on._ it ended up getting way out of hand, thus we have this 6k fic.

Rose does not belong here.  
  
Here there’s Mum and Dad and Tony, and John, John who she loves, despite it all. She really does. He's got nice eyes and gorgeous hair and a wonderful smile, and he's—the Doctor. Almost.  
  
It's not that. It's not him.  
  
It's that she thought she'd decided a long time ago that this wasn't what she wanted. This, the—the house and the cooking and the marriage bed. And, God, she feels like  _him_  sometimes. Kind of... repulsed by it. She has these moments, right, where she's sifting through the cupboards or wiping clean the windows or calling for pizza, or like once—this one time she was at the kitchen counter, bulldozing through a bag of crisps and kicking her feet against the granite, and John was at the sink washing dishes and he turned around and said, "D'you suppose I could muck out the gutters myself, or do we have to hire someone?" and she just—she felt this immediate tightening knot in her stomach, and she thought she might throw up. It was—it was scary. And she didn't want it, anymore, and wasn't sure she ever had.  
  
There are parts of this she likes. Like—like, see, John's got these gray patches, in his hair, yeah? And at night he'll sometimes fall asleep with his head on her shoulder, and she'll just sift her fingers through it, slow, careful, and wonder how much longer she'll go before she has gray patches, too.  
  
She wants to go home.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It's the most bizarre of places, yeah? Like, it's not a Torchwood or a hospital or even a Star Wars screening or something like that, it's in a shop. And on top of that, it's not a big reveal—like, she doesn't step out of a dressing room with a halo of gold around her, or stand regally at the top of an escalator and emanate timey wimey... stuff. Rose just—she just like, bumps into her. Like magic. Like fate. Like coincidence.

 

 

 

"Oops," says Rose, bending down to pick up the floral scarf and four sweaters she'd been carrying (they're not good bets), "sorry, sorry, I'm such a klutz, my husband’s always telling me to—"

And she straightens up, and there she is, just smiling obligingly at her in that  _you're-a-stranger-who-just-bumped-into-me-so-let's-just-get-this-over-with_  way (a way with which Rose is all too acquainted), and Rose's jaw drops.

"Oh—oh my God," she stammers, covering her mouth with her hand. She feels, absurdly, like she might laugh. "No  _fucking_  way."

Now she looks the slightest bit confused, as she holds out a pink button-up blouse (the one Rose dropped, not just a random blouse). "I'm sorry?"

Rose shifts the items onto her forearm, trying to process the situation and like majorly, majorly failing. "I'm sorry, it's just—you look a lot like someone I know."

She tilts her head to the side and smiles, half-puzzled, half-amused, and the gesture is so quintessentially Martha that Rose nearly lets out a hysterical bark of laughter, just at—at the ridiculousness of it all. They're meeting in a  _shop_ , for Christ's sake.

Then again, Rose does have a record of meeting important people in shops.

"Well, here are your things," she says simply, handing over the last of what Rose had dumped (okay, so it had been more than four sweaters). Then, perhaps just to be polite, she adds, "I like those boots. Where'd you find them?"

"Oh! Um, the sale section in the back, where they hide all the good stuff. These were thirty percent off, can you believe it?"

She raises her eyebrows and juts out her lip in appraisal (and there she was, being Martha again). "No, wow. I'll have to head back there another time."

"Yeah, do. Pfft," Rose scoffs. "Those silly shop owners, thinking they can fool us into buying the expensive stuff. We're too clever for their ploys."

"Yeah, yeah we are," she laughs, and it's Martha who asks, "Do you want to get coffee?"

 

 

 

"How was work?" John asks her when she gets home. Plants a chaste kiss on her lips and turns a page of  _The Origin of Species_  ( _A little light reading_ , he calls it).

"Oh, fine, fine," Rose hums, whipping open the cupboards for the wineglasses. She's that type of person now. The type who has a glass of wine after a long day at work. Jesus Christ. "It was a pretty slow day. I had a bit of an extended lunch break."

"Ach, not nearly enough alien takeovers on this planet," John laments, and it's a joke but there's some truth in it, Rose knows. John'd always like more alien takeovers.

"Yeah," she agrees amiably. "I met—" and she's about to let it spill, because keeping secrets isn't really an element of their relationship, other than that time John spilled hafnium tetrafluoride on the carpet and tried to cover it up by purchasing a piano to place over it. Endearing, yes, but a bit impractical.

But John is half Doctor, and if he knew that she'd met Martha,  _this_  Martha, alt!Martha or whatever (which made it sound like this was a Martha who wore fishnet tank tops and listened to Nirvana, but never mind (or should she say,  _Nevermind_ )), he'd probably come up with some excuse for why Rose couldn't talk to her. It would tear a hole in the fabric of the universe or some other such nonsense. Like there weren't like a million other universes.

"I met—" a friend, Rose finishes somewhat awkwardly, but Rose is a surprisingly good liar, and if secrets are now going to become an element of this relationship, then the least she can do is get away with them.

"You met a friend?" John repeats distractedly, adjusting his spectacles on his nose.

"Yeah, a new friend," she echoes, her back to him as she pours red wine into a glass. So what if she fills it a little bit higher than usual.

"What's her name?" John wants to know, and to tell a lie you have to wrap it in a little bit of truth, don't you?, so Rose says,

"Martha."

John looks up, and Rose turns around to look him straight in the eye and smile.

"I know, coincidence, right?"

 

 

 

It's weird, 'cause like, Rose is so totally the jealous type, so when she first met Martha, back home, she kind of expected to hate her, but like, she didn't. Which either meant that Martha Jones was really cool or that Rose Tyler was growing up.

But probably both.

 

 

 

"So you're married, yeah?" Martha clarifies the next time they see each other, sipping coffee as they walk down the street.

"Yeah, how did you—"

"You mentioned it, back in the shop, right after 'I'm such a klutz.'"

Rose grins cheekily at her. "Wow, creepy memory skills you've got there."

"I have to remember things, I'm a surgeon. Can't have a ninety-pound teenager getting the same dosage of anesthesia as the six-foot-six footballer before her, can we?"

Rose laughs, and looks sideways at her. "You know, most surgeons leave the 'remembering things' bit to the nurses. Most surgeons prefer to like, not give a shit."

"I'm not most surgeons," Martha replies plainly, cheerfully, and it's true, and a very very Martha thing to say.

"So anyway, you're married," Martha gently reminds her, and Rose agrees, "Yes, yes I am. And how about you? Beautiful, successful, not-like-most-surgeons? You must have a thousand suitors waiting outside your door right this minute."

Martha shifts, smiles guardedly. "Just got out of a long-term relationship," she explains. "His name was Tom. He worked in family practice."

"Oh," is all Rose can think to say.

But Martha breathes in deep, and looks up to the sky, and smiles very wisely, and looks very bright and open and alive. "I'm all right, Rose. I really am." She looks over. (Rose is staring.)

"You are," Rose agrees.

 

 

 

"...and that's how I managed to wheedle my way in to the United Nations! So I might be a tad busy for the next six months. But anyway, you! How was your day?"

"Fine," Rose replies, kissing John. "I saw a friend today."

 

 

 

That night Rose dreams of the beginning, of one single atom exploding into everything, of stars and suns and moons expanding at rates so fast her eyes are only blind, and all of it seen from the door of the TARDIS, and him beside her, saying,  _Don't you miss it, Rose Tyler? Don't you want to wander?_ , only when she looks over it's not him at all, it's Martha.

 

 

 

Rose is careful not to mention her too much around John, because if she does then eventually it'll become clear how close a friend she's becoming, and then John will want to meet her, and that will not work, on account of no.

Funnily enough, she doesn't mention John much to Martha either.

 

 

 

"Oh God, did you ever see that one film... " Martha's wondering as they leave the theatre, Rose refusing to throw the stale popcorn in the bin ( _It's still popcorn, innit?_ she protests when Martha tries to wrestle it away from her). "It had, um... it had Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, I think? It was called—ugh, what was it called?"

"Oh!  _Sleepless in Seattle_! I love that one!" Rose gushes through a mouthful of buttery kernels.

Martha looks sideways at Rose, delivering a very pointed look, which at first Rose just assumes is her chastisement for yelling with her mouthful in a hallway full of people, but she soon realizes that is unfortunately not the case (were it so, Rose would have the ever-convenient pleasure of shoving entire handfuls of popcorn into her mouth and making loud  _mwra-mwra-mwra_  smacking noises until Martha could only blush, shove her shoulder, and laugh). Martha frowns instead. "Rose," she begins, gravely, "what the  _hell_  is  _Sleepless in Seattle_. I was thinking of  _Awake in Atlanta_ ,  _that's_  what it was called." Then, nearly smiling, but in that Rose-half-the-time-I-just-haven't-a-clue-what-you're-on-about way (a way with which Rose is all too acquainted). "Half the time I just haven't a clue what you're on about," Martha muses. "Like that day we were walking past Bridge Street and you got terribly panicky for a second and asked me urgently where was Big Ben? And I just said, 'Rose, who the hell is Big Ben?'" Martha shakes her head and sips her giant soft drink noisily. "I swear you're on drugs or something."

"I definitely am," Rose confirms, vehemently miming a heroin shoot-up with one hand while clutching the popcorn bucket with the other. It doesn't work. She drops the bucket, and Martha blushes and laughs.

 

 

 

"How was work?" asks John."

"Fine," Rose says, and she kisses him, and glances at the film he's watching on the telly, which is a documentary on the Andromeda galaxy (which apparently they still have here), and Rose thinks to herself,  _I've been there_ , and realizes with that same knot cinching up in her stomach, that same lurch, that she doesn't remember what it looks like. That she really, really wants to.

That night there's another patch of gray in John's hair.

 

 

 

They're in the car driving back from a quick trip to the market, and Martha likes to listen to the depressing radio stations, the ones that only play the most important of all the news.

"It sounds awful to say," Martha confessed (Rose is leaning her elbow on the door, staring out the window, and watching the rain in London, because the news always makes her so sad), "but sometimes I think what this country needs is a real tragedy, you know? Something that forces us all to come together, even just for a little while."

"Yeah, like the Americans with their 9/11," Rose mumbles into her palm, and Martha keeps glancing over from the driver's seat, and sure enough when Rose gets home and googles  _New York landscape_ , there are two enormous towers standing there.

It should make her happy, but it doesn't.

 

 

 

They are having lunch at a little cafe downtown, and like any two respectable adult women at lunch together, they are gossiping and laughing hysterically at the cluelessness of the male species.

"I dated this men's health doctor this one time," Martha whispers, leaning in conspiratorially, giggling, "who thought he had to, like, stick his whole hand up there."

" _What?_ " Rose laughs, eyes crinkling as she brings a hand up to cover her mouth.

Martha leans back, making a face and gesturing with both of her hands. "I was like, mate, save that for your prostate exams," and at this Rose desolves into a helpless fit of giggles.

"And another bloke," Martha continues, high off the laughs she's getting—eyes bright, cheeks flushed, laugh slipping in between the words—"who  _would not do it_  unless I hitched my leg over his shoulder. He flat-out wouldn't do it!"

And suddenly the image of what it must be like to have sex with Martha is in Rose's mind, how her bright eyes would darken when you did something right, how the flush in her cheeks would heighten the lower down her body you went, how the same breath that formed her laughter would form a hitch of breath, a gasp, and maybe, if you were lucky, maybe even a name—

"Rose?" Martha's prodding, still laughing but a little thrown off. "Rose? I said have you got any ridiculous man stories?"

"Yeah," Rose responds eagerly, grinning wide, "Yeah I have," because she's good at things like that, she's good at quick adjustments.

 

 

 

Sometimes Rose looks up at the sky and sees hundreds of zeppelins lining the clouds, and she wonders, panicked,  _Where am I?_ , and it takes her—it always takes her a second to remember.

 

 

 

"How was your day?" asks John.

"Fine," says Rose. "And you?"

"Eh, all right, if you  _like_  working with electroacoustic phenomena," he answers, guffawing at the obvious absurdity of this prospect. Rose pretends to get it. "But, uh, you remember I told you about the U.N.?"

Rose nods in lieu of words, seeing as her mouth is already full of Bardot.

"Yeah, we've got—a thingy coming up, so I might be away this weekend, that all right?"

" 'Sfine," Rose decreed. "Would you play the piano for a bit? You know I love it."

"Of course!" John agrees a little too energetically, sliding with gusto onto the piano bench. With a flourish of his fingers he sets his hand atop the keys he'd had zero idea how to play two months ago. "What would you like me to play?"

Rose lets out a long exhalation, settling into the couch cushions and swirling her wineglass. (Martha's more of a beer gal, she found out today. She'd never have guessed.) "Something from back home," she tells him, her eyes already closed, and without another word he slips into "London Bridge."

(He never plays it when there's company, because if he played it then they would ask if it had lyrics, and if he sang them the lyrics they would wonder, because the bridges in London have stood for hundreds upon hundreds of years, and not a one of them has ever fallen down.)

 

 

 

"Oh, sorry," Martha apologizes as they're walking through the park one Saturday (a setting Rose realizes is almost self-consciously sentimental, but honestly, fuck it), and her phone rings. She pulls it out of her purse, checks the ID. "It's my mum," she groans. "Probably calling to complain about my dad's latest skinny blonde conquest."

"Ah," Rose nodded. "What's this one's name?"

"Barry."

Rose chokes on her water, the perfect film-worthy  _surprised_  reaction.

"Is that funny?"

"No, sorry, it's just—it just wasn't what I was expecting, that's all."

"I've told you my dad's gay, right?"

"No, er, no, actually."

"Oh," Martha acquiesces, smirking only slightly. "Well. My dad's gay."

"Good to know, good to know."

 They walk in companionable silence for a moment longer, and then Martha asks, "How come you never talk about your family, Rose?"

"I—what?"

"I said how come you never talk about your family? Your mum lives nearby, right? And your dad?"

"Yeah," Rose confirms, cautious. She swings her water bottle behind her, holding her wrist at the small of her back, then awkwardly swings them forward again. "I just," she starts."

"You just... "

"I just... my parents, they had another kid, a boy, and... and he's my brother and I love him, but sometimes I feel like there are worlds between us, you know? Literal—" Too far. "Just—worlds. And I feel, with me and my mum and dad, we've reached this point in our lives, where we're just a such different places. I mean, they have a  _kid_ , Martha, a toddler." She's staring straight ahead at a father and his son, tossing a frisbee with their dog—typical sentimental park behavior—and Martha's not even pretending not to stare straight at her, and— "And they're my family, and I—I think I wish I could see them more often, but... I just don't know how I should go about making that happen. That's not—I'm not good at that."

Martha's quiet for a moment. The father grins, motions for his son to run out a few meters, tosses the frisbee, and the boy catches it, giddy. The father doesn't look much older than John, which—scares her. "You know, Rose," Martha finally begins, and now Rose snaps away and listens. "You... you do this thing sometimes, this thing where you know exactly what you want, but you pretend that you don't, so you end up... not...  _doing_  anything about it." She backtracks, quickly, "And I don't mean to pretend I know everything, or anything really, about your family, or anything about you, but—"

"No," Rose cuts in suddenly. "No."

Martha looks taken aback. "I—I'm sorry?"

"No, I mean..." Rose amends, running a hand through her hair with a sigh. "I mean, you do know me. You know me."

"... Oh," says Martha, and she looks happy, she looks really, really happy.

 

 

 

Martha spends the night at the house that night, because John is away, so it's like a sleepover, like they're little girls or they're sisters. They watch a girly movie and everything.

And so what if Martha sits a little closer to Rose on the couch than sisters probably would. So what if Martha moves her leg so their knees and thighs are pressed together through layers of warm pajama cotton. So what if Rose gets up to pop more popcorn and bends over to pick up the bowl, and knows—can feel Martha's eyes on her arse, nearly unapologetic.

So. What.

 

 

 

"John's been teaching me how to play a bit," Rose admits, Martha next to her on the bench, Martha's thigh to her thigh, Martha's shoulder to her bicep (height difference, after all).

"So play me something," Martha says, and before she can decide against it Rose plunks out the melody to London Bridge, and Martha nods and says, "I think I've heard that somewhere before," and Rose's heart nearly leaps out of her chest.

 

 

 

They go for a picnic in the park on Saturday, and it's so utterly cliché, so predictably trite and every other synonym there is but Martha looks beautiful in the sun, dark skin shining and hair free and everything about her  _alive_ , alive.

And this is cliché too: Martha's fingers brush Rose's as she reaches for the wineglass, and she stares her straight in the eyes and says, "Thank you, Rose," and it feels like the first time anyone's ever said her name.

 

 

 

Late at night is when Martha starts pushing.

It's dark and humidly quiet outside the windows, and the single running light from the overhead is yellow and dim as Martha shuffles through the kitchen cupboards.

"Oh," she says, pulling out a white bottle and turning around, and quite immediately Rose knows it's no accident she found that. "What're these?"

"You know what they are," Rose tries to tease, trying to be funny, trying to like, somehow brush this aside. She gets up from the couch, takes a step closer. Maybe this conversation will just end here.

"Yeah, it's just... " Martha intones, her face the picture of innocence, "you and John have been married—what—four years now? I'd've thought that by now, you know... you might've stopped taking these."

Rose takes a step closer, hoping Martha will by some stretch of the imagination turn around and put them back. "We haven't—talked about that yet," she answers in a rush.

"Oh?" Martha inquires, eyebrows raising innocuously. "And why not? Four years in and you're not getting any younger, Rose—"

And that's when something snaps. "What are you doing, Martha," she hisses, quiet as though anyone could hear, as though John—as though John were listening.

Martha's facade falls away, and she's no longer playing the curious child. She stares at Rose head-on, eyes imploring, like she had earlier that day,  _Thank you, Rose_ , like she had a tendency to do. "I'm trying to figure out what you want, Rose," she tells her, direct, plain as that.

"Why don't you let me do that," and it comes out sharper than she thought it would, and standing under this fucking godawful kitchen light with Martha feet in front of her suddenly everything seems so achingly, achingly clear.

"Because you won't," is the simple answer.

"Maybe because I don't fucking know what I want!" An explosion, big and loud and so terribly  _there_. It takes Martha aback, and she looks at Rose like she's shocked and confused and a little bit hurt. "I don't fucking know, okay? I don't fucking know if I want kids, and I don't fucking know if I'm happy, and I don't fucking know if I—" She stops abruptly, because she can't look Martha in the eyes anymore, and because John is away from home, and because in this world the zeppelins shadow the sun and it makes her sad. She runs a hand through her hair.

"What do you want from me, then," Martha asks her, and it's quiet, and it's like peeling away another layer. "What do you fucking want from me."

And that's it. That's—that's all it takes.

"Nothing, God. I don't fucking want anything from you, I just want—you. I fucking want you."

Martha stares at her a moment longer—it's the first time Rose has seen her anywhere close to tears—and she has this crumpled look on her face that's not so much for her as it is for Rose, like she knows for a fact Rose is broken.

Then the look is gone and Martha's face is resolute, and she walks the extra four steps to Rose and leans up and kisses her, hard, fast, teeth clanging and fingers tightening in blonde hair to hard.

But this is the only way Rose can have it right now, and so she reacts, pushing her hips into Martha, stumbling back. Martha's back hits the counter and Rose is wrapped so tight around her already she feels the jolt as well, leans Martha over so she's kissing her from above.

Martha slides her tongue into Rose's mouth and Rose bites it on impulse, which makes Martha whimper, which makes Rose groan, and already there are hands snaking up her shirt and brushing the skin at the bottom of her bra.

"Get this—get this off," Martha mutters, breathless, and she's fumbling to unbutton the blouse, and then— "Isn't this—"

"Yeah."

"—the blouse you dropped at the—"

"Yeah."

And then she's laughing, laughing as she pulls Rose's top up over her head and laughing as she unbuckles Rose's jeans and yanks down her knickers and before she starts she's laughing as she says,  _The universe is one funny place_ , and Rose is thinking,  _You have no idea_.

 

 

 

On Monday John comes home and says, "How was your weekend?"

Rose kisses his lips and tells him "Fine."

 

 

 

Rose leaves work for her lunch break and meets Martha at a café, fucks her with two fingers in the bathroom, Martha's legs spread against the wall and Rose's lips hushed against her navel, and when she gasps Rose was right, it sounds just like her laugh.

 

 

 

Martha's pushing into Rose with her tongue, and when Rose comes she stops long enough to whisper  _don't forget this don't forget me don't forget this_ , and Rose thinks, I was going to say the exact same thing.

 

 

 

But it's not that.

It's Martha's face the day of that picnic, Martha's head tilted up to the sky and her cheeks and lips illuminated by the sun so beautifully Rose could almost forget the zeppelins passing over every five minutes or so.

And it's that face, those moments, that have Rose curling up to Martha in her bed, and whispering  _I love you_  into the crook of her neck, and hearing it back.

(The Martha at the picnic was so beautiful Martha could almost forget the zeppelins. She could almost forget, until they walked home hand in hand and Rose saw a phone box on the corner, and it wasn't blue.)

 

 

 

When Rose is pulling on her trousers and straightening out her hair, Martha sits up in bed and watches her silently, and then as she's about to go home ( _How was your day?_  John will ask, and Rose will kiss him, because despite it all she loves him), Martha asks, "Do you know what you want now?"

And Rose presses a hand to Martha's cheek. And tells her yes.

It's a lie. She's good at those.

 

 

 

There is a bridge in London that has stood for years and years, and one day John is driving and Rose isn't paying attention and he switches on the turn signal and suddenly they're turning left onto the bridge that shouldn't be, and Rose is crying and screaming and she's scared out of her mind, because this bridge shouldn't be here, they shouldn't be here, she shouldn't be here.

John turns off the bridge and stops on the side of the road. Pulls her out of the car and into the rain, and the river Thames is on its way to somewhere in the background. He holds her there, close to him, and her shoulders are shaking but he's always been there, since she was nineteen years old he's been there.

He takes her home and plays her a song, a song that Martha's head somewhere before, and then he makes love to her on the floor under the piano, and afterwards Rose takes the rest of the pills in the little white bottle, as if that's going to help, as if that'll do anything at all.

 

 

 

Rose takes Martha to the bridge. They stand there, overlooking the river. It does not rain. It is sunset.

"I have to tell you something," Rose begins, watching boats pull into docks as dusk falls close around them. She squints her eyes against the wind. "I'm not from here."

"You're not?" Martha asks. "But your accent—"

"No," Rose interrupts. Searching for words, she switches her weight onto the opposite foot. "You remember that song I played you once?"

"Yeah, yeah I do."

"And you said you'd heard it somewhere?"

"Yeah..."

Rose meets Martha's eyes. "Were you lying?"

Martha stares straight back. "No," she answers simply. "No, I actually—I genuinely recall it from somewhere."

"Where? And I'm—I'm not trying to... prove you wrong or anything, I just mean—I mean think about it. Really think about it."

Martha does. "I—I can't remember."

Rose nods. Looks back out over the river. It's nearly dark by now.

"Why? I mean—was I just being silly? Did you make it up? Is it actually—from somewhere?"

"It's from somewhere," Rose tells her.

And it's because Martha asks. It's because Martha says, "Tell me where," that Rose does just that.

 

 

 

"So," Martha says, and they're standing by her front door now. They've walked all the way back, because Rose likes to walk while she explains things. "So you're from an alternate universe."

"Yes."

"And you're sure you're not just on drugs?"

Rose laughs, hearty, real, head thrown back and everything, and it feels good. "No," she assures her. "No, I'm not on drugs." Now she shuffles her feet, fiddles with her fingers, scratches at the back of her neck. She's about to ask, but then—

"I believe you," Martha says, turning the key in the lock and stepping inside nonchalantly.

"You—what?"

"I said I believe you," Martha repeats, turning around from the threshold to meet Rose's eyes and tell her with confidence.

"But—why?" Rose can't help but asking, and it's nearly—it's nearly funny, that.

"Because," Martha responds, and this time it's her turn to sigh like she doesn't know how to explain it. "Because I remember things," she explains, "that I'm not supposed to remember. Things that never... actually... happened. Does that make sense?"

Rose laughs, wraps an arm around Martha's waist and pulls her forward so their noses are touching. "More than you know," she says, and kisses her.

 

 

 

"Do you miss it?" Martha hums, hands sifting through Rose's hair and skin pressed to bare skin.

"Every day," Rose breathes.

 

 

 

"Do you miss it?" John asks beneath the piano, his arm wrapped around her back and her head against his shoulder.

"Of course not," Rose replies.

 

 

 

It's not just Awake in Atlanta, or the twin towers, or Big Ben, or the London Bridge, or even the fucking zeppelins.

The air here. It doesn't taste the same.

 

 

 

There's a phone box on the corner by Rose's house, and the phone box isn't blue until one day it is.

One day it is, and Rose steps out of her house on her way to work and bites into an apple and flips off the zeppelins and thinks about fucking Martha over a desk during work hours, and suddenly the box is blue.

And just like that—that suddenly—there is a new Doctor who steps out of the box and grabs her round the shoulders and tells her "Rose, I've missed you, I've missed you," and says to her, "Come with me."

In the doorway of the blue box there stand a ginger and a boy, and they are both grinning and the ginger's skirt is very short and very cute and it's funny how in moments like these, regular thoughts still find a place in Rose's consciousness, so she thinks to herself—absurdly, she thinks— _I would like to borrow that_. Which is just—crazy, it's just mad.

"I planted a shadow of a TARDIS here in this universe, and hoped it might grow to be a full-on TARDIS and therefore able to transport between other TARDISes, so here I am, I've made a portal, and I've come back for you." Or—or something like that.

When she's thinking to herself in that moment—the apple dropped, once-bitten, from her hand and rolling down the street like she's Snow White—when her mind is racing for a second, she first thinks of Martha but consciously decides to skip over that thought, so then she thinks of her mum which hurts a bit and her dad which hurts a little less and Tony which hardly hurts at all because she's a terrible person obviously and she doesn't really know him. And then—and then she thinks of John, which, yes, stings. And of course, of course there's poignancy to be found in the piano he bought to cover the stain, and the hours he spent learning the songs she loved, and the nights he would sit there and play for her, and the rain and the car and the bridge that shouldn't be, and his still-wet hands skirting over her ribs beneath the piano, and the sound of the rain on the windows, and him inside her, and she loved him.

But really it's the patches in his hair, the scattered clans of gray, that reach inside Rose and give her that feeling, that twisting lurching knot in the pit of her stomach.

And then she thinks of Martha. But as soon as she does she realizes the sting is too big for her to ever make this work.

The Doctor sniffs, and of course it's all fun and games for him, there's no way he could face a situation like this without making a joke out of it, but—he sniffs the air. And he looks her straight in the eyes, and without a trace of humor in his voice he says to her, solemn, "The air here's a bit funny, don't you think, Rose?"

And so she steps inside.

 

 

 

They go on an adventure somewhere far away. Where they have never heard of London.

 

 

 

Afterwards she asks to be dropped off for a while, back in Cardiff, because she misses—because she missed it.

She fools herself into thinking it's just for a stroll, just for a walk through the city to rekindle old memories and smell the air, the air that settles in her lungs like it's saying,  _Welcome home._

But that's a lie. She's good at those.

She knows, really, where she's going, which is to Torchwood, where Jack is, where Mickey is, where—

And there they are suddenly, both of them, which is nice because it means she gets to hug them all at once, and then look at Martha, and see if—see if—

And that's when she notices.

They're holding hands.

 

 

 

The Doctor insists on a "big ol' companion reunion"—his words—and Amy punches his arm and protests "Hey! New companions too!" and he fusses and looks irked with her but really, really he's smiling.

Rose sits at the table next to Rory, who's very polite, and of course— _of course_  across from Martha. Under the table Mickey's got his hand on her knee. Rose can tell.

"So Rose," Martha starts, leaning forward, eyes soft and bright beneath the golden chandelier. "You must have really missed it."

And Rose thinks,  _I've fucked you in a bathroom stall, and when you came you said my name like it belonged to you_ , and Rose thinks,  _I miss you_ , and nearly says it out loud, but it wouldn't make any sense because she's sitting right there anyway, and Rose thinks,  _Martha, do you remember things that never happened?_

She says,

"Oh, definitely. I’ve wanted for so long to come home."


End file.
